UPDATE ON STORM DAMAGE

Posted on Jan 23, 2017

The weekend’s severe weather outbreak took a final swipe at Southwest Georgia as storms moved across the Thomasville area Sunday afternoon. Prior to the afternoon incident, power outages from Sunday morning were mostly restored, with about 300 customers remaining without service. By the time the final system moved through our area, that number quickly grew to about 3,000 customers without power.

“Most of our calls began coming in around 2:30 p.m.,” said Chris White, Assistant Utilities Superintendent. “We had crews already working to repair damage from earlier in the morning, so we were ready to begin the restoration process after the afternoon system rolled through.”

The damage to the City’s electrical system was mostly due to the extremely high winds that accompanied the storm. “We had numerous utility poles and lines down, many as a result of downed trees,” said White.

Many of the trees were down in the hard-hit MacIntyre Park area, including Glenwood, Clay, Euclid as well as the Holly Springs subdivision. More than 100 trees were estimated to be down within our service territory, with many impacting utility poles and lines. Today, about 40 trees remain to be cleared.

Crews are out today continuing the restoration process. “They began working around 3 a.m. on Sunday morning and continued until around 1 a.m.,” said White. “At that point, we had to bring crews in to rest. Unfortunately, we had about 750 customers without service at that point, but our crews were brought in for their safety to return at daylight, which are more productive restoration conditions. Crews were back out again at 6:30 a.m. this morning to begin getting our remaining customers back online.”

As of 10:00 a.m. today, City of Thomasville Utilities has about 550 customers still without power. Mutual aid calls went out on Sunday, and Fort Valley, Cairo, Douglas, Griffin, Monroe, Blakely, and LaGrange sent crews Monday to assist in the restoration process.

While electrical service is the most pressing concerning, CNS is also experiencing several large-scale outages in Thomasville. “We have three service areas that received significant damage,” said White. “These will require some rebuilding which cannot take place until we have poles replaced. We are asking for customers to be patient in those areas as well.”

Areas most significantly damaged and without electrical service Monday morning included the MacIntyre Park area, the area around Vashti (Clay/Ernest), Holly Springs, Newton Road, St. Paul Road and Summerhill Road. “While some of these areas are in the county, we do provide electrical service, and the severity of the damage coupled with estimated restoration time is a factor in fully restoring these areas,” said White.

The areas that are impacted by the CNS outage include Glenwood Drive, Clay Street, Dawson Street and Summerhill Road. About 1,200 CNS customers are impacted.